No One Likes to Pay for Parking: How Legaltech Delivers Better Client Experiences

5 min read

Here’s what you should know about improving your clients’ experience through legaltech.

The worst part of a client’s visit to a law office is, arguably, parking. In our #ApparaSocialVideos over on LinkedIn, we’ve heard more than once that clients do not like to pay for parking for law office visits. Especially in dense metropolitan areas like Vancouver, where Appara is based, parking in general is an ordeal. Even if you do manage to find an available space close to your lawyer’s office, you need to determine if you’re in a public lot, a time-limited lot, or meter parking. Then, you need to ensure the parking meter or pay station is functioning correctly, and then pay the appropriate rate, which can vary depending on the time of day. It’s an unnecessary hassle that makes clients’ lives harder.

That’s where legaltech comes into play. With emerging legal technologies, your clients can meet with you virtually from their home or office, sign documents digitally, and generally do without the inconvenience of a law office visit. Here’s what you should know about how legal technology is improving the client experience.

The Client Cost of a Downtown Office Visit

Office visits are quite costly for law firm clients. First, consider that for every downtown office visit your client makes to your firm, they likely lose 2 hours of their time. Imagine a client driving 30 minutes each way to your office, meeting with you for an hour, and dealing with other time-sucking activities like looking for parking, waiting in the elevator, etc. All of that is time your client wouldn’t have to spend away from work if you had met with them virtually.

Next, consider that your clients are high-value professionals who charge upwards of $100 per hour for their time – and sometimes as much as $500 per hour. That’s not what they pay you in legal fees – that’s their lost productivity.

Add those numbers together, and a single office visit to your firm costs your client $200 to $1,000 per visit, plus the cost of your legal services. Multiply that number by multiple interactions, and it becomes clear: Forcing your clients to come onsite is a waste of their time and money.

Emerging Legaltech Solutions Make In-Person Visits Obsolete

In days gone by, in-person visits with clients were the only way to get legal work done. If you needed to collect intake information from a client, or get them to sign a document, they had no choice but to come to your office. Now, though, emerging legaltech solutions are making it possible to conduct client meetings and even entire transactions digitally.

With e-signature technology, for instance, you can have clients sign documents from anywhere in the world. With digital collaboration technologies like project management systems and videoconferencing tools, you can conduct consultations, share documents, and provide real-time updates virtually. In doing so, you can eliminate the need for clients to come on-site for just about anything.

This also has the added benefit of permitting clients to handle matters in their own time and on their own schedules, whenever dealing with you is most convenient for them. Instead of your clients rearranging their schedules to handle simple administrative tasks, legal technology enables them to do everything on their own time, from anywhere.

Other Benefits of Legaltech for Clients

Legal technology has a variety of benefits for your clients that can help you to improve client satisfaction – and even client retention. Appara’s internal data from our State of Canadian Legaltech Report shows that improved client service is one of the top 3 benefits that law firms see from implementing legaltech. With legal billing and tracking software, for instance, your team can track their hours more closely, resulting in more accurate bills for clients. Or, with an online payment processor, you can enable your clients to pay you online from anywhere – making for a much more convenient engagement from the client side. 

(Note: If you do decide to use an online payment processor, don’t just opt for any generic payment service – make sure it’s one that complies with trust accounting procedures.)

Legal technology also offers the added benefit of transparency for clients. The right legaltech app, like a case management app, can give clients real-time access to information about their matters, so they can always know where their matter is in your workflow. You can even use legal case management software to send automated emails to your clients updating them on their matters.

And when it comes to creating documents, a document automation platform (like Appara) can eliminate the risk of human error, which makes for faster, more accurate documents that your clients can review instantly and sign in minutes.

In sum: Legal technology makes for faster, more accurate, more transparent legal work, with fewer risks to your clients and your firm.

Legal technology doesn’t just help your firm – it also helps your clients. From more streamlined paperwork, and faster and more accurate legal work, to eliminating the need for in-person law office visits, emerging and established legaltech solutions offer a variety of client-side benefits that improve the overall client experience. With the right tech stack, your law firm can impress your clients and keep them coming back, matter after matter.

Are you ready to discover how emerging legal technology solutions can help your firm accelerate your work, reduce errors, cut costs, and keep clients happier? We can help. Appara’s platform of entity management, workflow automation, and document automation software can help you cut down time-per-file, improve the accuracy of your work, and even scale your operations. Contact Appara today to schedule a demo and unlock your FREE trial.